


some nights I wish my lips could build a castle

by badboy_fangirl



Series: This Ain't a Love Song [3]
Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 17:17:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4928338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This one carries Tim past the series finale, into an ending I'd like better ;-)</p>
            </blockquote>





	some nights I wish my lips could build a castle

**Author's Note:**

> [](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/americanoutlaw/media/Ship%20pics/Minka%20and%20Taylor_zpsicjuz6sx.jpg.html)  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> This is gonna be a two-parter. Because I just don't buy the ending for Tim Riggins that the show gave me, or I should say, I don't know if they were trying to sell me Tim/Tyra, but I ain't buying it is my point. And I know this picture is a whole lot of Minka & Taylor, but whatevs. They are adorable. And the title of this one is lifted from Fun.'s song "Some Nights."

There is nothing to fight about when there is so much sex to be had. Not that he would ever pick a real fight with Lyla, even though at least ten times a day some snarky, smartass remark wanders through his head, lingers on his tongue, and ends up not being said. He wants to rib her about Chris and church and having sex _very_ quietly in her bedroom when her mom, stepdad, little brother and sister are all within ear shot.

Turns out Lyla's gotta kink for the sneak. Which, if he's being honest, he knew that about her way back when, but when they were sneaking around because of Street that was a different kind of thing.

This…this is a challenge. Not that he'd want her mom or stepdad to catch them, but when she bites her lower lip to trap a sound from coming out of her throat while he's moving inside her? It's all _he_ can do to keep it quiet. She lights him up like no other, always has. He reckons it's because he loves her, but he's not saying that again, not till she says it, that's for damn sure.

But still. Love makes the best sex, even he knows that. Sex with Garrity is the best he's ever had; he meant it when he said that. She has this way about her. She touches him with just the tips of her fingers, along his hairline, or down the crevice of his spine, sometimes a little dance across his bare thigh, and it just undoes him, every time.

When she starts calling him her boyfriend, he feels ten feet tall.

 

 

He's not sure how it happens.

Somewhere between the recruiter for San Antonio saying "Sign here," and the joy in Lyla's eyes when he tells her he got accepted to college, he starts to think he's actually gonna do it.

Go to college. Yeah, sure, why not. His grades are decent for someone who never studies, who half-asses it through everything or gets a Rally Girl to write his papers. Imagine if he tried? He might get a B or something. He might learn something. He might get the satisfaction that she does out of school.

He might actually want to go, instead of, you know, going 'cause it's the law and Billy would be up his ass all the time if he cut, and of course, football.

Not that football matters anymore after January. And it won't ever matter again, unless he goes to college.

So, he's going to college. Yay, him. Go team go. Street will freak the fuck out when he calls him to tell him.

 

 

At some point, when she's packing up her bedroom, and pausing periodically to kiss him until his lips are numb, it occurs to Tim just who he is in this little play.

Lyla is going to Vanderbilt. In Tennessee. It's not as far away as New Jersey, but Six is not who he's in love with. So, it might as well be the fucking moon for all the distance it is.

So who is he, here? He's the high school boyfriend, that's who. The one she'll leave behind for whatever better thing life shows her out at the Grand Ole Opry.

He remembers a time when Coach showed up for practice with a black eye and fat lip and he wouldn't tell anyone what had had happened, but then someone heard that Coach and Mrs. Coach had been out to dinner with some guy on Saturday night and they got into a brawl. Tim asked the Rally Girl who had all this gossip who the other guy was and she had giggled, "It was Mrs. Taylor's high school boyfriend!" He can so see that happening some day, 10, 20 years down the line, he's in Nashville for some random thing and he looks Lyla up. Then he takes them out to dinner to prove what a big man he is. Then he ends up rolling around on the carpet with some guy he doesn't know over a girl he can barely remember.

(Except, he knows. He'll always remember Lyla, vividly, like the color parts of _The Wizard of Oz_.)

He starts planning it then, though it's not specific. When he gets to San Antone, it's all negative. Bitchy coaches, boring classes, no hot girls even to keep his interest.

(They couldn't anyway, none of them are Lyla.)

As he flings his text books out the truck window and drives home to Dillon, he says goodbye to Lyla Garrity.

(She just can't hear him because he doesn't say it out loud.)

 

 

He wakes up in the barkeep's bed with his tongue feeling hairy and his head throbbing. He can't remember the sex, which is good, because that would just make him feel guilty.

He knows it's over, but he still loves Lyla. Being with anyone else just doesn't feel right anymore. He's not sure what to do about that, but random sex with a stranger definitely isn't the answer.

( _Maybe it's Jesus_ he thinks with a smirk for no one to see.)

All his old coping mechanisms are gonna have to go the way of his textbooks, though maybe he shoulda held on to that Psych 101 book, come to think of it.

He gives the daughter a ride to school because his head hurts too much to say no. Of course, his truck blowing up and the incessant talking makes him wish he'd never woken up at all.

Death woulda been sweet.

Becky walks away with a cliche on her lips, and the pounding in his temples has a two-syllable beat.

(Ly-la, Ly-la.)

 

 

"You're an idiot," Street says through a phone from 2000 miles away. "A total fuckin' retarded idiot."

"Thanks, Jay," Tim replies sardonically. His beer bottle is empty and the sheets in the Airstream still smell like Lyla, but he hasn't shed a tear. "I did the right thing," he says, though if this is what doing the right thing feels like, he doesn't understand why anyone ever does it.

Six just makes loud, gusty sighs to show his disagreement. A beat passes, and then he asks, "How drunk are you?"

Tim laughs. "Not very, which _is_ surprising."

Another short silence is followed by, "You're totally serious about this, aren't you? Letting her go. Not fighting for it."

"We're on different paths. There's nothing to fight for. I'm never gonna be her Vanderbilt-caliber whatever. I'll just always be the high school boyfriend."

Six sighs again, but this time it's not as irritated-sounding. "So, that's it, huh?"

Tim stares at the ceiling of the trailer as Becky pounds on the door. "Give me my phone back, Tim!" she shouts.

"That's it."

After he hands Becky the phone, he slams the door shut, avoiding her offer of dinner or whatever to make him feel better. Alone, in the dark, the tears finally come.

It'll never be this way for him ever again.

 

 

Sometimes, when she looks at him, he gets it. Like really gets it. Like it occurs to him that Becky is to him what he is to Lyla. Not that Lyla didn't love him, because she did, she always did, even back when it was bad and they were wrong and all that. Lyla had always loved him, that's why he'd been with her in the first place. The in love came later, but there had always been some kinda love going on.

He knows Becky loves him long before she confesses it. What's hard about it, 'sides that she's the daughter of a woman he slept with and only 16, is that he thinks what he feels back towards her is more about what she feels than what he feels. Which is fucking confusing. But then he starts thinking about Lyla and how she must have fed off what he felt for her, and maybe that's how they'd ended up the way they had. Because Tim Riggins had loved Lyla Garrity enough for the both of them.

Maybe Bex loves him enough that it wouldn't bug him too much that she wasn't Lyla.

But see, even that thought just makes him uneasy. Like, just how he couldn't demand Lyla stay (though every solitary cell of his body had cried out for it), he can't possibly fuck up Becky's life anymore than it already has been because he thinks it's enough the way it is.

Because there might come a day when it's not.

(Lyla might come back. Stranger things have happened.)

 

 

In prison, there is so much clarity.

Maybe it's the lack of beer. Maybe it's just celebrating your 19th birthday in a 10x10 cell with a guy named Norman who doesn't want to talk anymore than you do.

Maybe it's just that for all the thinking he's ever done in his life, and how he'd always fancied himself a deep-thoughts kinda guy, these are the sobering thoughts of an adult who has thrown his life away so his fuck up of a brother can do the right thing. And from where he's sitting, it actually looks like Billy is doing the right thing. 

Between his brother and Becky's weekly visits and the letters that start coming from Tyra, who tells the story from a Mindy-shaped filter, it sounds like things are good. Billy's version of things has never been trustworthy, so Tim is glad he has back-up witnesses.

He tries not to let the bitter come in and possess him, but it ends up happening anyway. Maybe because Becky's expression of adulation never changes, and she touches his hand briefly each time she comes, and he ends up storing those little things away until he's abusing the thought of her in a way he never allowed himself when he was on the outside. Before, Becky kissed him, but now, with nothing but fantasy to occupy him, he sees himself kissing her. From her red lips to her pink-tipped breasts to the vivid pink between her thighs, and he feels guilty, dirty, _wrong_ , but unable to stop it.

Every time a letter comes from Tyra, he can't help but wish the postmark was a bit east of Texas, and he nearly drives himself insane wondering if Lyla even knows that he's in prison. He convinces himself she must know, that Buddy would never not pass on that horrifying piece of information, assuring himself that he was always right to not want his daughter with the likes of Tim Riggins.

Then, there's the horrible day when he gets a letter from Mindy that asks him to talk to a CO and put Lyla's name on the visitor's list. _Because she didn't want to write, she just wants to come see you,_ Mindy says, and he can feel something inside him curl up and die.

Because as much as he longs for Lyla every day and night, and has ever since she left for Vanderbilt the first time, he can't let her come here to see him. He cannot take it. He can barely be civil to Billy when he comes and he's done with seeing Becky, too, except for the fact that he's already broken her heart and the idea of telling her not to come see him anymore is this impossible thing to get past his lips.

He writes Mindy back and begs her, with all capital letters and words underlined and exclamation points that under no circumstances is Lyla Garrity allowed to come see him in prison. Talk her out of it, whatever she has to do, he tells her because if she comes there, he will refuse to see her.

 _I can't_ , he scrawls across the bottom. _I just can't._

Mindy writes him back and tells him she took care of it, and Lyla never shows up.

(He does not hope each time the guard comes to tell him he has a visitor that she somehow snuck through against his wishes.)

 

 

So, the worst thing about getting out of prison? It's finding out that your lowlife of a brother let your dog run off at some point and never bothered to go find him. Or maybe it's the high school girl you know would lay down for you, but you've already said no once (twice?) and you can't go back again. Or maybe it's how everybody tries to act like you just got home from war, or some really cool thing, and not, you know, fucking prison?

Tim's not sure what annoys him more, and he can't figure out why beer doesn't make it go away.

Guess some things changed over the last 11 months.

The best thing he's got going on is a job at Buddy Garrity's bar. Yeah, that's right. Guess who stood up for him at the parole hearing? Not just his brother, not just his Coach. But his ex-girlfriend's daddy. The one man on earth Tim never expected to have in his corner at this point in his life.

His gratitude knows no bounds, even if at the same time it feels completely shitty.

Tyra comes home. He fucks her and it feels nice. It feels like something good. When she says, "Tim, you're just lonely," he ignores both what she says and the answering bell that goes off in his head that agrees with her.

When she puts the breaks on everything, he downshifts with her, because he gets it. He wouldn't take a chance on him, either. Well, that's probably not true. He'd run head-long into traffic, get hit a few times and then while recuperating in the hospital, he'd think, _maybe I shouldn't have done that._

Yeah, prison didn't change him _that_ much. But Tyra helps him forgive Billy and remember why he made the choice at the beginning of this whole thing and when Mindy has her second baby, a little girl to go with Stevie, Tim decides it really was worth it. They name the baby Genevieve Angel and call her Jenny. Which makes no fucking sense to Tim, but whatever. She's as cute as a button and life goes on.

Marches straight across his heart and makes him the favorite uncle, and that's all that matters.

He saves his money and builds a little at a time on the house. Then he stops building the house to build a barn when some old Booster friend of Buddy's dies and leaves #33 his three horses. Cheryl sells him the Airstream for $200 and he moves it on to his own land and the horses nickering at night lull him to sleep.

Life could be much worse, it's true. Life _has_ been much worse, and he remembers that every time he's tempted to be discouraged.

He talks to Jay on the phone, who is now working on his second kid as well, and they promise to get together sometime soon. Tim knows it's not going to happen since the Streets moved out of Dillon the previous year to Virginia because it was closer to New Jersey and Six has no reason to come home again, but it's still nice to imagine his best friend sitting in his half-built house, drinking beers with him. This little fantasy usually ends with him talking Jay into staying, even though it would be completely ludicrous for them to even consider it.

But who cares? It's his little dream, no one else's. It doesn't matter if it's never gonna happen. Just like Buddy tells him one night, "I think I'd have to die to get Lyla to set foot back here."

Tim coulda told him that years ago, but instead he argues the point to make his boss feel better about it. "You don't have to die, Buddy," he deadpans. "Just almost die." 

The belly laughs go on for a while and they end up shutting down the bar together, the way a father and son-in-law might.

(That's another fantasy nobody knows about, because who would he ever tell?)

It's only two weeks later when his co-worker Dave hits him at the door when he comes in for his shift with, "Buddy had a heart attack this morning. They don't know if he's gonna make it."

Two and a half years have passed, but he braces himself for the only thing that could bring Lyla Garrity home. 

He has no idea how he'll survive it.


End file.
